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Introductions Are In Order
The Tale of Illiv Cell I remember when I first saw him. The sun was beating down a special sort of sweltering heat, the humid brutal heat that forced whispered conversation, lest a loud word anger the temperature further. I wanted to be away from people, and had traveled to the ever-growing graveyard at the south end of the town. Tall broad-leafed trees cast shadows among the graves, and their shade made the heat almost bearable. It was a nice walk, if not somewhat frightening. From any tomb might emerge a Forsaken, called forth by the graveyard's rapacious urge to swallow our town. It was a perfect sort of atmosphere, nice and gloomy and uncomfortable, so it only made sense that I would find my best friend there. Rounding a turn on the hilly ground, seeing him hunched over as he was, shirtless, bloody and covered in a horrid white and black paint, I nearly fucking shit myself. The only reason I didn't turn and run was that the second I lay eyes upon his form sitting cross legged on the ground he turned around and locked gazes with me, completely crippling me. The first thing I noticed, aside from the traditional Mourning-Day make up he wore on his face, was that he was just a scrawny kid like me. "Just what the fuck do you think you're doing! You look like an idiot and it's boiling hot out here!" Those were the first words that I ever said to him. Cynicism or flight were the only two things I had been capable of at that point in my life, and with his gaze holding me down I had only one option left. He scowled and set down the knife he had been holding to his stomach, not that it looked like it could have done much more work on the boy. He just sat there bleeding and looking stupid for a few seconds before he replied. His eyes immediately changed from wide and wild to heavy lidded and calm. "I'm writing the names of these dead in my book of keeping." He gestured to a leather journal lying open and blank in front of him. "And just what the fuck is that supposed to mean? If you're going to dress up like one of these corpses and play pretend with them shouldn't you pick a cooler day for a play date?" I saw a flicker across his face. I struck a chord somewhere in him. Yeah, motherfucker. I hated people who took themselves seriously. I leaned back on a tombstone, sensing that I was now in control of the situation. "I mean really. By the look of you it seems like you might better spend your time trying to work some food into your belly than painting your face with what I can only assume is bird shit and clay and doing silly things in a graveyard." He closed his eyes and stood up. He made a show about it too, definitely a drama queen. Wait. He picked up his knife. I had forgotten about that. Oh sweet seven please don't tell me he's actually completely loony. "My own survival is meaningless, as is yours. Neither of us serve a purpose. Unlike you, I am honest. I allow my passions and desires to flow through me, and act on them, embodying them and my Self." Please, please don't let those passions involve killing. I bet they involve killing if they involve dead people. "Seven, guide my tongue!", I prayed, and guide my tongue they did. They helped me say the dumbest, most provoking words that I could have possibly said, to anyone other than Illiv Cell. "I'm going to go ahead and make a guess here. Someone you cared about died when you were young, and now someone who you cared about has died again and you feel like your whole fucking world is collapsing and you're just chosen to be miserable by the gods?" And he smiled. The fucker smiled and for the second time that day I nearly soiled myself out of shock and fear. "Yeah. You got it right on the head. Mostly. You seem smart, so why are you out here?" "Oh the usual. I'm just some angst filled orphan kid who's trying to get away from his horrible abusive aunt and uncle. It's not just the sun that heats up that house, eh?" "Sounds like the life. My name is Illiv Cell. So why do you exist? What is your purpose? I have food." We were best friends ever since. A few years passed. Our town, Gerdad, sat right on the edge of Rhivic and Gildor, an edge that moved inch by painful inch deeper into Gildor every day. At this point in my life it was only ten miles out from the town that I lived in. Roughly ten miles away from the cobbled, shady streets, all life abruptly came to an end. There was a visible line in the ground where the grass stopped growing, and where any foliage transformed from vibrant greenery to dead fucked blackery. Illiv and I walked that line every damn day. Every day I was that poor little blade of grass sitting with no space between himself and the lifeless dead rock that was Illiv, thinking, wrongly, "Oh, hey, maybe this inexorable tide of bleakness and death will stop here and leave me alone!" I mean I made some progress on him here and there but he was way smarter than me and ended up winning almost all of our arguments. Illiv was raised an orphan, too, but the less lucky kind. He had no family. He lived completely on the streets his whole life. He claimed that for as long as he could remember he had fended for himself, but I knew that there had to be some lies there. He was pretty damn good at fending for himself though, mind you. Some days he nearly made me believe that load of shit. Category:Character lore